NJ man accused of illegally selling deer to restaurants, used girlfriend's head as gunrest during hunts

Mark Jarema of South Jersey was charged by Pennsylvania authorities with forcing his girlfriend to help him in an illegal deer hunt, and sometimes "using her head as a gun rest to steady his weapon." He sounds like a real winner. The state's Department of Environmental Protection is having a hard time finding evidence to substantiate additional charges that restaurants purchased the meat from him, and served it to customers: "By the time we were informed of the potential sale," said a rep, "months had passed and it would have been impossible to link the sale to the restaurant."

I wonder if there’s even much of a difference in taste between venison and horse. I’ve had venison, and I know they tend to give horses a pretty diverse diet somewhat similar to deer.

I’ve never had horse, and honestly, It’s not all that disturbing to me. My problem is that horse can make its way into the food supply masquerading as something else, which makes me upset at regulators and quality control. What else could be getting into food surreptitiously?

Has anyone here had horse? Is it any good? Is it comparable to beef or venison or elk?

I’ve eaten both. IMO venison tastes better. It does taste more like venison than beef, but not as intense. That may be because the only venison I’ve eaten has been hunted and butchered from the wild, whereas the horse I’ve eaten was served in a restaurant and probably the horse was not raised only for eating or treated very well. It was lean and sweet, definitely if you were eating only horse meat you would know it was not beef.

I would imagine though, you could fool some people into thinking horse meat was veal based on how it looks.

Full disclosure: when regularly eating meat my favorites among red meats were mutton, goat, venison, and *then* beef, ox, buffalo, etc. So if you like lighter flavored meats better, then you might actually prefer horse meat.

I really like venison. And I have friends in Idaho and Montana who send bear sausage a few times a year, and that’s just delicious. At least, wild bear is delicious. On one occasion I’ve had bear that was very habituated to people and had been eating garbage, and that’s pretty much what it tasted like.

The extra-sad part is that a disembodied head is the only way this makes sense. You want stability from a gun rest, which you usually don’t get from a head still attached to a living human. Unless she’s one of those “living statues” people.

Shame on this guy. But shame on the restaurants as well. Everyone knows it’s illegal to sale game meat in the food world. I’m a licensed NJ sportsmen and they hammer that home at all the classes. I’d assume a restauranteur would know better if some sclub is selling you venison, well below market price from a distributor.